adventures in compassionate eating

Main menu

Post navigation

About Lauren

Hi! My name is Lauren and I've been vegetarian since August 2007, ever since I discovered the devastating and disgusting truths factory farming and what that means for animals, our health (physical and spiritual), factory farm workers, and the environment. It's a lifestyle I've chosen for the rest of my life-- a long, beautiful, rewarding, yet sometimes lonely path from which I'll never look back. I have been almost completely vegan for the past 5 years or so.
I currently reside in Birmingham, Alabama with my wife, step-son, and our two cats. I enjoy reading, traveling, cooking, eating, drinking coffee and tea, talking loudly with close friends, being with my family, potting plants and pretending I know how to garden, hiking, and playing with my cats.
I am currently putting together a cookbook that I hope to be lucky enough to publish.

This makes 1 9×9 pan, about 5 servings if you’re hungry (6 if you’re not that hungry) 🙂

I know this sounds like a lot of work, but since you can do some tasks while others are cooking (or even make some of this ahead of time), it’s really not that big of a deal. I’ll explain how to minimize your time by multi-tasking in the instructions below.

While you’re waiting for the water to boil, sauté the mushrooms, onion, and garlic in a little oil over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Add the spinach and heat just a couple of minutes until warm. Your water should be boiling for your pasta now, so get that going.

While the pasta is cooking, go ahead and make the tofu ricotta and vegan parmesan (you can also make these a couple of days in advance).

When everything is ready, spoon a small amount of the marinara into the bottom of your 9×9 pan, just so you have a thin layer of sauce in the bottom. Add a layer of lasagna noodles (3 noodles, unless you have the longer style noodle, in which case you can cut them to fit and use the “scraps” to form another layer).

Add a half of your tofu ricotta mixture, then half of your spinach/mushroom mixture,half of your parmesan and mozzarella, then a layer of sauce. Repeat the layers once more, ending with the final sauce and cheese layer on top.

So most people think “chicken soup” when they are sick, especially with a cold or the flu. I don’t think the chicken or the noodles have anything to do with, at least from what I’ve read! I’m no doctor, but I think its probably the veggies, garlic, onion, and hot liquid, which opens up your sinuses, soothes your throat, and keeps you hydrated.

Regardless, we vegans and vegetarians need something warm, hydrating, and healing when we are sick and I’m willing to bet this soup is a lot more beneficial to your body than dead meat, bleached-flour white noodles, tons of sodium, and oil. 🙂

This is one of my favorite soups, whether I’m well or not, and it has tons of healing properties!

Garlic – Tons of health benefits! In addition to its antibacterial and antiviral properties, it boosts your immune system, reduces cold symptoms, and has disease-fighting antioxidants!

Onions – Onions contain phytochemicals, as well as Vitamin C, so they help improve immunity. They also blast free radicals in your body, reduce inflammation, and heal infections.

Kale – A true superfood, kale is extremely high in Vitamin C, antioxidants, and anti-cancer nutrients. It’s also anti-inflammatory, great at detoxifying your body, and provides cardiovascular support.

Lemons – High in Vitamin C, alkalizing, antibacterial, and anti-cancer.

P.F. Chang’s is one of my favorite restaurants and I love their vegetarian lettuce wraps (Ma Po Tofu is also awesome)! However, I know when I go there that I’m consuming way more sodium and fat than my RDA. The lettuce wraps have 2,390 mg sodium and 21 g fat!

I decided I wanted to make a healthier version at home that I could feel better about eating. This also has lots more veggies, which you can feel free to add or omit according to what you have. My wife and I love this recipe, which I’ve adapted from others I’ve found online, and it makes enough for us to both have dinner and then lunch the next day too.

10-12 Large leaves from a head of romaine, green leaf lettuce, or (if you must) ice berg lettuce

Mix all of the sauce ingredients together and set aside.

Wrap the tofu in a clean kitchen towel and set a heavy pot or iron skillet on top for about 5 minutes or so. You can leave it longer, while you chop up all the veggies. You want to get as much liquid out of the tofu as you can.

Once you’ve got everything ready, heat a large wok or skillet over medium heat with the oil. Break the tofu into chunks with your hands and then crumble each chunk into the pan (think tofu scramble). Go ahead and add the onions and bell pepper too since they take longer to cook. Cook this mixture, stirring occasionally and breaking up any larger chunks of tofu with your spatula, for about 5 minutes.

Add the mushrooms, water chestnuts, and carrots and cook another 5 minutes.

Finally, add the red pepper flakes (if using), the sauce mixture, and the green onions and heat through another 3 minutes or so.

Serve by filling each lettuce leaf with around 1/4 cup filling, depending on how big your lettuce is. I typically just place the bowl of filling and a separate bowl with lettuce leaves in the middle of the table and we stuff and eat them one at a time.

It’s finally starting to get cold this Christmas season. We had a terrible drought that lasted most of Autumn and the much-needed rain has brought the chilly weather in with it. It’s cold and dark when I get home from work now, so I love meals like a bowl of hot soup that come together in no time! With prep, dinner is ready in less than half an hour!

I cannot say enough positive things about the flavors that the Better Than Bullion brand brings to soups, stews, and gravies. I use their “No Chicken Base” most of the time, but their “No Beef Base” has a deeper flavor, like beef broth, for recipes like this. It is essential to getting that good beef-like flavor here. It’s also great in gravy and in vegan French onion soup!

In a large soup pot, cook the onions, celery, and carrots over medium heat in a little olive oil for 3 minutes. Next, add the mushrooms and cook for another 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add in the garlic and cook for another minute. Add in the remaining ingredients, bring to a simmer, and cook for 15 minutes.

Using a ladle, spoon out some of the broth into a soup bowl and whisk in the flour. Whisk that back into the bot and let simmer another 2-3 minutes until the soup has thickened up a little. Now you can serve!

While I’m not abandoning this blog in any fashion whatsoever, I wanted to let you know that I have a new blog, dedicated to blender recipes that take around 30 seconds each. I hope that you will follow this new blog at http://veganwithavitamix.wordpress.com as I will be posting delicious, healthy recipes for busy folks like myself. The new blog has just been started, so there isn’t much to see at the moment, but I will be posting there more often since it’s dedicated to quick, easy recipes.

I’ve really gotten into green smoothies in the past year or so. I’m known at work as the girl who always brings a jar of “green sludge” for breakfast. I’ve found that if people don’t see the smoothie and they taste it, they really like it, but the green color just turns people off– reminds them of swamp water or water from a swimming pool that hasn’t been tended to in a few years. I get that, but I personally love the beautiful, bright green color that most of my smoothies turn out to be.

I recently came across all the internet hype over Dr Oz’s “green drink,” which in fact, is a smoothie, not a juice or whatever else a “drink” would insinuate. I noticed that it had a lot more veggies and herbs and a lot less fruit than I typically use. I put equal amounts of fruit and greens in my smoothies and tend to avoid really potent flavors like celery and parsley. I know these things are good for you, but I prefer them cooked or in cooked foods (in the case of parsley).

Still, I’m a pretty advanced green smoothie drinker, after all, I’ve used greens like dandelion, chard, and collards, so I’ve advanced past the beginner stage! I decided to try Dr O’s “drink,” which he claims his kids drink every day and love. Oprah called it “a glass of fresh.” Fresh is good!

The recipe, which seems to vary by what website you happen to be looking at, basically calls for cucumber, spinach, parsley, mint, carrot, apple, celery, lemon, lime, and ginger. I made the recipe as-is and have to admit, the celery and parsley were all I could really taste. After a few sips, I thought, “This isn’t great, but it’s tolerable.” I really wanted to pour it out halfway through. By the end of the jar, I felt sick.

So now I have all these ingredients in my fridge and I need to use them. I decided to try again, this time my way, and see if I could make it taste better. I really enjoyed what I came up with. Adding in pineapple (which is great for adding a lot of sweetness) and a baby banana somewhat evened out the fruit to veggie ratio. I also added more lime and lemon juice since it’s really good at cutting through the “green” flavor and brightening the whole thing up. I hope you like it 🙂

Purple is my favorite color, so I love the way this smoothie looks, plus it’s yummy! Cabbage is one of the veggies you won’t taste in a smoothie, so don’t be afraid. It’s loaded with cancer-fighting antioxidants!

Feel free to add greens to this, as always, but it will change the color. Spinach is another veggie that you won’t taste in a smoothie (and I actually added some to mine, so it isn’t as purple as it would have otherwise been.)